


my ghosts and my guardians

by metalhawk



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Child Soldiers, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghost Qui-Gon Jinn, ahsoka is badass but also. too young to be fighting a war??? @the Jedi wyd, count dooku is a bad great great grandpa, the jedi code is shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 13:37:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16430417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metalhawk/pseuds/metalhawk
Summary: In which Count Dooku is theworstto his great great grand padawan, and Qui Gon Jinn’s ghost is very proud of Ahsoka Tano.





	my ghosts and my guardians

**Author's Note:**

> hi y’all!! i love ahsoka so much and dooku would’ve been such a good grandpa if he hadn’t fucked off to the dark side...and would love to see qui gon talking to ahsoka some time!! i also loved to explore the concept of force bonds...so there’s a lot of that here. i hope you enjoy this!!

The only thing Ahsoka knows about the fallen Master Dooku of Serreno is that he is a lost cause. 

 

The Council banned all record of him from the Temple library, and now the only way she could find out anything about him is to ask Obi-Wan, or Anakin, if she’s feeling especially  _ brave _ —Yoda. There was another way, too, but that involved taking Dooku in combat, and that terrified her half to death, even though she had been forced to do it more than a few times, however brief. Once he was dead, he would be dead in memory, too, once her generation of Jedi has died out. 

 

The lack of knowledge didn’t help her much when he obliterated her shields and wreaked havoc on her  _ head _ . 

 

She tossed and turned on the thin mattress that served as her bed, suddenly feeling extremely  _ cold _ . The stack of datapads that held a few half-finished datapads clattered off her desk and onto the floor. She heard the clamor of droid pedes, the war cries of her troops, the ignition of a lightsaber. 

 

“You’re a good soldier, Ahsoka.”

 

That voice saying her name was  _ enough _ . She screamed, drawing her lightsaber to her hand with the Force and triggering the ignition, sitting up. 

 

She saw nothing. The whirlwind of terror that had overtaken her was suddenly gone. The only evidence of that  _ cold _ was the scattered datapads all over the floor. She sighed, putting her saber by its smaller shoto and going to gather her battle reports. 

 

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, and she didn’t have much hope for sleep, now. She took one of the battle reports, from a skirmish on Naboo that had ended the day it had started. Once they finished cleaning up droids, Obi-Wan has softly asked if her and Anakin wanted to visit the memorial that the Nabooians had set up for his old master, Qui Gon Jinn.

 

“A good soldier, just like your master and his successor.” A pristine, velvety voice drawled. 

 

Ahsoka dropped the datapad, cold running up her back. She immediately pulled both of her ‘sabers into her hand, and searched the room once more. 

 

Count Dooku stood in the corner of her room, dressed in dark brown jacket and formal pants. A Jedi outfit. One he didn’t deserve to wear anymore. Terror seized her, making her face pale and her heart stop in her chest. Dooku was sinister, evil, and she wanted nothing more than to break through the window and feel the Force signatures of  _ people _ , innocent and not, but nothing like Dooku at all. 

 

“There’s no need to worry, child,” He says, voice unwavering. Despite what she knew him to be, he stood before her, not trying to attack but almost trying to  _ comfort _ . “I mean no harm. Only to see what my teachings have made.”

 

“They made someone who is nothing like you, Dooku,” She snarls, raising the tip of her lightsaber to his neck. 

 

“Indeed,” He comes closer, the lightsaber puncturing his neck. He doesn’t falter as it does, and she realizes that there’s nothing she can physically do to stop him. What she’s seeing isn’t corporeal. With a mindless motion, he pushes the light of her saber down to the hilt. “You are  _ reckless _ , little one. Angry, impulsive, at times. And you have grown quite  _ attached _ .”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” She says, lying through her teeth. “Attachments aren’t the Jedi way.”

 

“And as  _ Jedi _ , we both know it, Ahsoka,” He meets her eyes, and where she expects to see a ring of yellow, there is nothing but brown. “But you’ve grown attached. To Skywalker. To Kenobi. To masters you have not yet known. I feel it in you, the desire to do anything to protect them, and the frustration at the fact that you can’t seem to shed those attachments, and the fierce protectiveness that comes with them.”

 

“You weren’t welcome here, to begin with,” She makes sure her fangs show when she growls. “And now you’re just picking me apart?”

 

“Mentoring, rather. Telling you what you need to hear,” Dooku says. “What Jinn failed to learn, and failed to teach.”

 

“I don’t want to hear it from you!” She screams, shaking with anger and with fear. “Not from the person who tried to kill me time and time again!”

 

Dooku goes cold. The yellow rings return to his eyes, and his outfit shifts to a darker brown, with a cummerbund at the waist and a billowing cloak. A lightsaber materializes in his hand, and lightning crackles at his fingertips. 

 

“I thought that all the anger festering inside you meant you might join me,” He tilts his chin up, looking down at her. “But perhaps this shall be another one of those times, where I defeat you!” 

 

He’s lunging, and Ahsoka is scrambling back towards the wall, but there’s nowhere else to go. She feels cold hands at her temples, wrapping around her lekku harshly. Her eyes roll back into her head, and then all she knows is  _ war _ . 

 

Battle droids, marching towards her, in endless and unblinking streams. She wonders, briefly, if they know that they are just marching towards death. 

 

A clone screams behind her, and she turns back in time to see Greivous plunging a saber through his chest. Greivous turns his metal face towards her, stalking forward with an inhuman speed, and goes cold with her lack of lightsaber. 

 

She picks up a fallen clone’s blaster, trying not to look at the canoed head that makes her want to cry, and shoots for Greivous’s chest. His silence terrifies her as he deflects every one of her lasers, and she had never felt more alone, and more scared. 

 

Her shots come with less aim and with more desperation, and Greivous continues walking towards her. The battle doesn’t seem to get anywhere between her and the cyborg creeping towards her, leaving a clear line for him. 

 

She’s taken Greivous before, but now she’s without her ‘saber, and the clones just stand and stare around her, which just adds to the nightmare effect. Her soldiers don’t fight, don’t scream, just  _ stare _ , and then droids take them out one by one. Echo dies beside Fives, Waxer beside Boil, and they don’t give a  _ damn _ , just staring at her and ignoring her rapidly approaching combatant. 

 

Greivous swings his lightsaber down on her. 

 

She screams. “Make it stop!”

 

Her hands shoot away from her body, and droids fall like dominos. Greivous is pushed into the wall, and the clones around her fall, still silent. 

 

The ground lurches, like the entire world has been pushed off its axis, and when she finally regains her balance, she’s standing in a temple. Or, what looks like one. 

 

And, at her feet, is  _ her own body _ . 

 

She screams, silently begging the Force and the gods above to make this nightmare stop. She clenches her teeth, looking to the sky, tears slipping down her cheeks.

 

Ahsoka shakes, finally gaining the courage to look down at her corpse, wondering if she’s doing so from the afterlife. She’s rested with her arms at her sides, grey vines creeping across her body like vines. Her eyes are rolled back into her head, tinted red at the edges. 

 

She moves down the hall of the temple, a sob ripping from her throat as she sees the body of her master, now. He looks as if he’s been thrown to a volcano, and she can see that the flesh not covered by his robes is charred. Three of his limbs have been severed. He’s almost unrecognizable, but she would know that face anywhere, just as she would know the lightsaber that he grips in his mechanical hand. 

 

She sees Obi-Wan next. His looks old and grey, and almost peaceful in his tan Jedi robes. His lips are upturned in what looks like a smile. There’s a lightsaber burn through his chest. 

 

_ At least he didn’t suffer _ .

 

And then comes someone she’s never met, only felt a glimmer of his Force when she looked up at the memorial sight on Naboo, only heard of him in stories. Her heart still aches when she sees Qui Gon Jinn’s body, face pained and robes charred around the puncture through his chest. 

 

She looks up, and there’s Count Dooku, and fear seizes her again. She grimaces when she sees that his head is definitely not connected to his body. He’s handless, too, and his face is in an expression of fear and pain and silent  _ pleading _ , and she can only guess that he didn’t—couldn’t—put up any sort of fight before his death. 

 

Yoda lays just past Dooku, and Ahsoka wonders why she hasn’t turned and run by now, but her body moves against her mind’s wishes to leave. She sees Yoda, looking just as peaceful as Obi-Wan, with no visible wounds at all. He’s small, just as he always has been, and Ahsoka knows he suffered the least out of all of them. 

 

“I am the cause of almost every death in this lineage, directly and not,” Says a sinister voice from behind her. She whips around, and sees a wrinkled, white figure covered almost completely by a black cloak. “Except for yours!”

 

He lunges towards her. Lightning dances up her skin. She screams, terrified, the darkness sweeping through her veins. 

 

She wakes up. 

 

She screams, desperately pushing Dooku off of her. His eyes are still rolled into the back of his head, and she pulls the cover of one of the vents down and pulls herself inside. Dooku walks mindlessly through the wall and out into the city. 

 

She looks down into her room, breathing hard, and brings her knees to her chest. The vents aren’t her dream place to be, but she would rather not be back in that room. That’s the only place Dooku chooses to haunt her. 

 

“Come down, little ‘Soka,” Says a voice, calm and soothing. She jumps, looking for the source, and sees a man with long, straight hair meditating near her bed, who wasn’t there before. “I won’t let him hurt you.”

 

She considers for a moment, finally surmising that it must be Qui Gon Jinn, and that if what she knew about him was right, he wouldn’t hurt her at all. She silently hops down and out of the vents, standing awkwardly in front of a dead Jedi. 

 

“You are right about me, Ahsoka,” He says, finally opening his eyes. “I wouldn’t dare hurt you. Your master might have my head.”

 

“I know he would.” She tried to ignore the waver in her voice, crossing her arms over her chest with a scowl. “But I can hold my own.”

 

“I have seen that you can,” Qui Gon nods, sending a rush of proudness over the brittle, third-hand bond that they shared. He sighed, rising from where he sat. He was much taller than her, at what she guessed was about 1.9 meters or so, and she knew that even at her full, adult height he would probably remain over her head. “I’m...sorry about my old master. He likes to taunt  _ me _ by taunting those I love.”

 

“He does this to Obi-Wan? And Anakin?” She asked, surprised. 

 

He nods. “Yes, though I suspect they will not be open in their feelings enough to share it with anyone.”

 

“Right. Everytime my master has a nightmare, he never wants to talk about it,” Ahsoka sighs. “So I don’t talk about mine, either.”

 

“I’m sorry it has to be this way, little ‘Soka,” He sighs. “I wish to have seen your growth as a living person.”

 

“My  _ growth _ ?” She raises an eyebrow marking. “I’m sorry, I’ve never met you in person, master. And...only Master Plo calls me ‘little ‘Soka’.”

 

“I met you quite a few times before I died, though you obviously don’t remember,” Qui Gon explained. “I was good friends with Master Plo, and he had his heart set on me meeting you. I held you in the Temple’s nursery when you cried, and you always laughed when I lifted you with the Force,” He recalled, quite fondly, a smile on his face. “I was happy to learn that my intended Padawan, Anakin, had taken you on as his student.”

 

“Oh,” She said, quietly. “I had no idea.”

 

“Of course,” Qui Gon said, laughing. “You were only three standard at that time.”

 

“Right,” She says, and silence falls between them. She’s not exactly sure what to say to him, her master’s master’s master. Her… _ great grand master _ ? The one who died when she was three years old. 

 

She hugged herself, trying to get rid of whatever traces Dooku had left in her head, trying to get rid of the  _ cold _ . 

 

“I am very proud of you, Ahsoka,” Qui Gon said, putting his arm on her robed shoulder, the ones she wore at night. “I think you are more like Anakin and I than the council would like you to be,” Qui Gon laughed, “but I know that you will do great things one day. The Force has told me of your future, and it’s  _ bright _ , blindingly so, and I know you will be the  _ fulcrum _ to the fight ahead of you.”

 

She takes his praise with a soft smile, hugging him, and unlike what she suspected, he’s surprisingly corporeal, but still has a shimmering blue tint to him and shroud of mystery surrounding him. 

 

(Internally, she wants to ask why he’s so vague about her future, but she figures by telling her he would throw off the balance of the universe, or something, so she doesn’t ask.)

 

“Thank you, Master Jinn. That...means a lot to me.”

 

“Of course, Ahsoka,” He says, pulling back to look at her. “It’s the least I can do. You are undeserving of my master’s torture. One day, you’ll be much stronger than him.”

 

“I hope so,” She mutters. “Crusty old hag is gonna have to go out of commission one day.”

 

Qui Gon laughs, grinning down at her. “You are so much like Anakin, with that mouth of yours.”

 

“I got it from him,” She smiles back. “He’s...like a father to me. I know I shouldn’t feel that way, but Dooku says I come from a lineage of people who don’t know how to be unattached.”

 

“Indeed,” Qui Gon nods. “You must know that I’ve never been an avid believer in the Code, but that rule is…”

 

“Impossible?”

 

“In my case, and in the cases’ of my predecessors, yes.”

 

Ahsoka grinned again, before getting an irresistible urge to yawn, the adrenaline from Dooku finally leaving her system. Tiredness tugged at the edges of her consciousness.

 

“You must sleep, young one,” The ghost in front of her says. “You have a long day ahead of you. Off to Felucia, right?”

 

“Yes, master,” She said, looking up at him. “Obi-Wan isn’t gonna like me being tired.”

 

He gives her a small smile. “Oh, you don’t want to have  _ Obi-Wan _ annoyed with you. I suppose I shall leave you to rest, Ahsoka.”

 

“Right,” She smiles, tiredly. “Goodbye, Master Jinn.”

 

“Until next time, Padawan Tano.”

 

She sleeps more soundly that night than she has in months. 


End file.
